Summary of Episode 2 of Season 2 of “The Bunker”: “Order”

For everyone Silagethere is equal and opposite Silage. After spending your first episode of season 2 Following one character in near-silence, the second season of Graham Yost’s post-apocalyptic mystery packs enough characters, dialogue and plot twists in Season 2 Episode 2 to strangle a horse—or fill a bunker, if you will. If it’s less effective than its predecessor, it’s because it’s too busy to follow the series’ guiding principle: keep it simple and stupid.

But it’s hard to find too many faults with “Order,” named after the secret tome that Mayor Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins, soft-spoken and impossibly tall) is consulting about the true nature of a bunker in a hidden vault with only him and the judge. Mary Meadows (Tanya Moody) ever stopped by. She was once his student, or “shadow”, until some incident 25 years ago forced her to quit smoking and then forced her to drink.

Now Bernard needs her help again. Ever since they saw Juliet Nichols refuse to clean the outer chamber of the bunker and just… turn around and walk over the hill and out of sight, instead of drop dead like everyone elsethe place is bedlam. The Raiders, commanded by Bernard’s deputy and would-be shadow Robert Sims (Common), and the deputies under the nominal control of newly minted (and secretly very sick) Sheriff Paul Billings (Chinaza Uche), have to do the job of enforcing the laws. curfew and suppression of uprisings.

Their real problem is the “Down Depth,” as the mechanical depths of the Bunker are called. All of Juliet’s friends and accomplices live here: Walker (Harriet Walter), her mentor; Shirley (Remmie Milner), her best friend; Cooper (Matt Gomez Hidaka), her shadow; and Knox (Shane McRae), the mechanics’ supervisor, the man Juliette once followed and the man who tipped off the authorities to her whereabouts. Knox wants to remain silent for fear of retaliation if they commit any sabotage against the bunker. Shirley is hungry for answers, and short of that, blood. Walker, who is briefly arrested by good-natured Bottom Deputy Hank (Billy Postlethwaite), just wants cooler heads to prevail before anyone does anything stupid. If they are truly going to rebel, they need to act smart.

Bernard knows, of course. Through a deft political maneuver, he gathers everyone in the bunker to hear a big speech about a seemingly miraculous event that happened earlier that day. Naturally, he can’t reveal the truth: Juliet, with the help of Walker and her ex-wife Carla (Claire Perkins), has replaced a faulty tape used by the IT department (once Bernard’s domain) to deliberately kill anyone they send “to clean up” with tape, which worked. Instead, he takes credit, stating that the IT department has developed an incredible new tape that can help people withstand exposure to the “toxins” of the outside world for longer than ever before. It’s the first day of a new era! The first step back to the surface! Hooray!

Even Judge Meadows is impressed, despite her distaste for Bernard – and I think she has no shortage of physical withdrawal symptoms after abruptly giving up booze. She agrees to sign his lie in front of everyone and throws a small cash gift to everyone in the bunker to make people happy. In return, she has one simple demand: she wants to exit using the same heat tape that Juliet used. She said she was tired of being the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the scenes; now she needs his balloon, his escape.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, we also catch a glimpse of Juliet’s semi-estranged father, Dr Pete Nichols (the ever-soulful Iain Glen), who is coping with the apparent loss of his daughter by throwing himself back into his work. obstetrician. (Her discovery that authorities regularly sabotage the chances of conception in families with rebellious ancestors is one of the reasons Juliet fought the authorities from the beginning.) But other residents of the bunker are not as sure as the doctor that his daughter is dead. . Graffiti began to appear throughout the brutal concrete space with the words “JL” – Juliet lives.

Perhaps it would have been nice if she lived in this particular episode? Certainly. Robbins, Common, Moody and Walter are vividly present on screen, but Juliet’s steely gaze is show. I completely understand the decision to separate these two storylines, at least for now. However, there’s no doubt that screenwriter Fred Golan and director Michael Dinner knew they had an uphill climb, or in this case, an uphill climb, when they encountered this episode. Of course, the script has its flaws: Shirley’s rebellion is pretty corny, and I heard the word “tape” more in this 45-minute episode than in the hundreds of hours of TV I watched all year.

But – very similar to this review! – this episode has a task: it must reintroduce the world, the story, the plot (from the big picture to the detailed mechanics of the story) and characters to the audience. All the first episode had to do was show Rebecca Ferguson’s Indiana Jones through an abandoned bunker tower. In other words, the difficulty level was higher and the rewards were lower. If the goal was simply to refresh my memory and immerse myself in the story again, mission accomplished.

Sean T. Collins@theseantcollins) writes about television for Rolling Stone, Vulture, New York TimesAnd wherever he isReally. He and his family live on Long Island.